1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to educational devices and more particularly to educational devices which use pegs and peg boards for teaching number and set theory.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Quality of education is a subject that is much talked about in recent years. Due to increasingly crowded school rooms and to school budget reductions, there is serious doubt as to whether children are being effectively taught.
Low cost and effective educational tools that are usable by children with a minimum of teacher supervision would help alleviate the educational problem. A number of patents in the prior art, notably U.S. Pat. No. 777,268 of T. W. Thompson, U.S. Pat. No. 1,173,298 of M. Montessori, U.S. Pat. No. 3,721,020 of H. Martin and U.S. Pat. No. 3,811,206 of R. Gaccetta all disclose such educational tools.
Thompson discloses a board having a number of geometrically-shaped blocks with numerals, sets and number names printed on their upper surfaces. When a child finds two or more blocks with mating geometrical surfaces, he learns to correlate the number, name and set represented thereon.
Montessori discloses an educational device for teaching basic theories of geometry including a work block having one or more geometrically-shaped recesses or indentations in which a plurality of pegs, also geometrically shaped, may be inserted. In this way the child is taught how to subdivide an often complex geometrical shape into its simpler component parts, such as rectangles and triangles.
Martin discloses a large work board having rectangularly-shaped, color coded indentations receptive to cube-shaped blocks having letters or other indicium printed on each of their six faces. The blocks may be inserted into the indentations to form words or may be manipulated in other educational manners.
Gaccetta discloses a work board having raised portions in the form of sequential arabic numerals and further having blocks with letters printed on an upper face and having a recess or indentation on the bottom face which may mate with the raised numerals on the work board.
All of these inventions are good in that they seem relatively inexpensive to manufacture and that they teach specific skills such as addition, number recognition, geometric shape recognition and spelling without the need for direct teacher supervision. The prior art, however, does have two outsanding deficiencies.
A first deficiency is that the educational devices are not specifically designed to provide both tactile-kinesthetic and visual sensory exercise during the learning process. Combining the two sensory modalities is very important for small children since their visual conceptualizations are not always as fully developed as their tactile-kinesthetic conceptualizations.
A second problem with the teaching devices previously disclosed is that the number of educational games that they make possible are limited, thus leading to a quickly bored child and to a substantially shortened educational lifetime for the device.